Of course, this is a joke, but I guess that perfect watches without pet peeves are extremely boring. And people with pet peeves? They could do with some real problems.

My pet peeve: Hublot watches, most of them are totally wrong in every respect when it comes to looks. But why bother? I don't need to buy and wear them, I even could choose not to look at announcements of new models. But I do the latter, love the torture of my eyes, love to describe here how awful Hublot's newest darling is. It makes me feel so good!

aesthetically speaking, I really dislike poorly implemented date wheels. Too many watches seem to place a date wheel on the watch as an afterthought. I especially don't like date wheels that cut into a numeral. Either take out the numeral or take out the date. It's not a bad on dials with stick markers. Longines seem to be a really bad offender of ruining otherwise really nice dials with sloppy implemented date wheels. I'm sure there are others, but I just can't think of any at the moment.

I won't name any brands or particular watches but there are many watches that have puny date windows. They look like a pin head! Besides being useless, at least for me, I think that they often times ruin a nice dial. There's my pet peeve.

1. Date wheels that don't coordinate with the dial. That means using a stock movement with a white date wheel and putting it in a black-dialed watch. It's just being cheap. When it happens with an in-house movement, it's just plain wrong. Yes, that means I have a problem with some versions of the Nautilus and Royal Oak.

2. Carbon fiber on a watch case and/or dial. It's over.

3. Price increases. I understand inflation. The prices of some watches have increased way beyond inflation.

4. Rolex. Yes, they make very good watches, but they don't make the best watches. Yes, most TZers who own them do so for their high quality and durability. My annoyance is more due to the people out there who buy/wear/admire Rolex because of their supposed prestige and recognizably. I guess this would apply to a lot of luxury brands as well. At a social function, someone admires my watch and asks "is that a Rolex?" (sigh, "no"). Visiting a jewelry shop, the young salesman notices my Reverso, shows me a Submariner and says "time for an upgrade?" (sigh). Excellent marketing on their part, I guess. It does promote the large counterfeit Rolex market out there. At lease I can walk down the street with my JLC knowing thieves are looking for Rolexes.

Munched numbers! Take a look at the Rolex Sky Dweller. In my opinion it is an atrocious design flaw. They placed a second time zone on the dial but crushed 3 numbers. Amazed that this watch passed their high standards. Sorry to those that own this watch. Just venting.

Too much what?
-- too much writing on the dial;
-- too much space between the case and the movement, i.e., a small movement in a large case;
and most personally,
-- too much watch (case size) for my wrist.

(I could have said too much money for watch, but I don't begrudge watchmakers from trying to make a living, even if I do wish that the watches cost less.)

11. Different sized numerals (with Journe's CS and CB as exceptions).
12. Date windows between 4 and 5 or placed in small seconds dials.
13. Too many superfluous registers at the edge of the dial circle.
14. Subseconds dials too close to the dial center.

and probably a few more.

Nerd Sven

ARS BREVIS:
There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with art-lessness.
[Piet Hein]

Munched numbers
IIII
date wheels not matching the dial
watches without the date
no lume
lume only at 12 3 6 and 9
hands that do not come to a point
short hands
upside down numbers
3's and 9's that are having a nap(horizontal)
Rubber/latex straps or whatever silly name on luxury watches
watches that are not available with a bracelet.
watches without a clear caseback
prices

...though I cheated a bit...it didn't come this way. But for $100 one has no qualms taking a screwdriver to it to finish the job. Heck, at some point I actually painted this bezel. I didn't like the result and buffed the paint right off.

It's become a pedestrian complication that is too easy to implement. Call it a GMT watch, or dual time zone, or something else. But if it can't handle my business travel to India, it isn't a "world time" watch.

1. Date wheels that don't coordinate with the dial. That means using a stock movement with a white date wheel and putting it in a black-dialed watch. It's just being cheap. When it happens with an in-house movement, it's just plain wrong. Yes, that means I have a problem with some versions of the Nautilus and Royal Oak.

2. Carbon fiber on a watch case and/or dial. It's over.

3. Price increases. I understand inflation. The prices of some watches have increased way beyond inflation.

4. Rolex. Yes, they make very good watches, but they don't make the best watches. Yes, most TZers who own them do so for their high quality and durability. My annoyance is more due to the people out there who buy/wear/admire Rolex because of their supposed prestige and recognizably. I guess this would apply to a lot of luxury brands as well. At a social function, someone admires my watch and asks "is that a Rolex?" (sigh, "no"). Visiting a jewelry shop, the young salesman notices my Reverso, shows me a Submariner and says "time for an upgrade?" (sigh). Excellent marketing on their part, I guess. It does promote the large counterfeit Rolex market out there. At lease I can walk down the street with my JLC knowing thieves are looking for Rolexes.

Agreed on all fronts, particularly 2 & 4. I own a Rolex, and I like and admire it, but it's not my favourite in the collection (and it's a very modest collection). It is the only one that hasn't developed a fault though.

I find display backs to be entertaining, even if the movement isn't anything out of the ordinary. I have a Fortis watch where I actually went through the trouble of having the AD swap out the closed back with the display back, and it is nice to see what makes the watch tick.

I second this. I love crystals with AR coating. It makes the watch look so much more interesting and is one of those few distinguishing characteristics that make a watch seem more valuable in my opinion. The new Cartier Drive looks like an attractive watch to me but the pictures so far do not make it look like it has any AR coating, which would be a deal killer for me.

My top pet peeve is the cost of service and the short service intervals recommended by the manufacturers.

I have 6 watches, even if I stretched some of the recommended 3 to 5 year intervals to 6 years, I'd be sending a watch in to service every year and that's too high a cost both in terms of money for the service and all the logistics of secure sending and receiving. If you care about the watch, keeping track of all the details of the work in progress and whether the watch safely arrived at the service center or back home is a burden that I don't want to be bothered with except once in a great while maybe... when the service also serves as a cleanup to make the watch look almost new again.

Everyone mentioning how AP bezel "screws" line up, yet can not be turned...

Sun, 12 June 2016 15:17

In case you didn't realize it, those are not screws-- they are the heads of hex nuts that go through the case-- the screw heads are underneath, and don't line up any more than any other screw heads do.

can handle Daylight Savings Time / Summer Time offsets automatically. They require manual adjustment.
That's why only quartz digitals and ana-digitals really can work as true World Timers-- and most of them still don't have all 37 time zones.

Most people seem to have an automatic rejection of a white date wheel in a black dial, without realizing that it can replace a missing hour marker and balance the dial. In some cases a black date wheel would create a black "void" in the dial design where it eliminates an hour marker. This would cause a distraction every time you looked at the dial, as your eyes would automatically be drawn to the "missing hour marker".